Worst Day, Best Day
by monkeymouse
Summary: Three years after Sozin's Comet; Toph tells Katara about the event that changed her life.


Worst Day, Best Day  
A Fanfic for _Avatar the Last Airbender_

"Now, isn't this better than last time?"

The last time they were in the Fancy Ladies Day Spa, Katara and Toph Beifong had spent days in Ba Sing Se; looking for the stolen Appa, making sure that the city could withstand the Fire Nation attempt to take it over—an attempt they knew would surely come. A great many exciting things happened to them during their first stay, but there were also days when nothing much happened at all. On one of those nothing days, the two girls decided to treat themselves to an afternoon of pampering—Toph rather reluctantly.

A few things had changed in the three years since then. The Fire Nation had been stopped in its mad attempt by Fire Lord Ozai to dominate the known world, even if it meant raining fiery destruction down upon it. Avatar Aang had faced Ozai, and defeated him, and even stripped Ozai of his Bending. Now Aang and the new Fire Lord, Ozai's son Zuko, were on a mission to create a new city: a place where all nations were welcome, where Benders and non-Benders enjoyed the same rights to live in peace.

This left a few people at loose ends. Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe was one; he wanted to come on the mission but couldn't contribute much to the diplomatic negotiations that would be part of setting up the new government. That was the job of the heads of the Water Tribes. He stayed around Ba Sing Se, sharpening his swordfighting skills under his mentor, Master Piandao. That, and his uninterrupted time spent with his girlfriend Suki of the Kyoshi Island warriors, kept him pleasantly busy; he forgot to be insulted at being left behind.

Sokka's sister Katara regretted being left behind more than Sokka did; she had more to lose. During their months together, beginning when Katara had freed the Avatar from an icy prison and they traveled the known world, a love had grown between Aang and Katara that was every bit as powerful as that between Sokka and Suki. Unfortunately, it was determined that Katara also could not represent the Water Tribes in any government negotiations. But it also meant that Aang was nowhere near her, and wouldn't be for—for nobody knew how long everything would take.

She was running out of places to visit and explore when she suggested spending a second day at the spa to Toph Befong. The first day, years ago, had been enjoyable enough, until some of the high society girls of Ba Sing Se mocked Toph, perhaps not realizing that hers was one of the richest families in the Earth Kingdom. Toph chose to let the restored King of the Earth people handle his part of the negotiations without her—especially since she could only have gotten there by flying bison. She never liked being out of touch—literally—with the earth beneath her feet.

"Better?" Toph paused after she asked that; as if she had to consider it. After a minute or two she spoke: "Yeah, a bit. I guess."

Sometimes Toph the Earthbending prodigy could be as hard and impenetrable as the stones she Bent. This was one of those times.

Katara, however, was just as true to her own Waterbender nature: if she couldn't go through a boulder to get where she needed to go, she'd go around it or gradually wear it down. They were in the steam room; she put some more water on the hot rocks and lay back to enjoy the steam. She'd try to get around Toph a little later.

Both girls reveled in the luxury of being able to do pretty much whatever they pleased in Ba Sing Se, and just about everywhere else in the world. Because of their "meritorious valor" in the war, they never had to pay for anything. The bills were forwarded to Fire Lord Zuko; what he paid out was a tiny fraction of what the world owed Avatar Aang and his friends on that fateful day.

"Last time" was a bit different. Toph was, after all, the only child of the Beifong family, one of the wealthiest in the Earth kingdom. Any debts she ran up would surely be covered by her family's fortunes. Of course she couldn't hope for that while they were hiding in the Fire Nation, waiting for the return of Sozin's Comet and the day of battle.

However, now Toph was in an ambiguous place. During her time with Aang and friends she had unlocked the secret to Bending metal; something that all the world knew was impossible. She had done it, and, when the war was ended, she offered to start a school of her own, to teach Earthbenders how to use the new ability.

And hardly any students came forward. At first only two or three, hesitant and uncertain. What she may have hoped would become a major academy devoted to Metalbending had not yet had a chance to start.

"It's not as if you're doing something wrong," Suki told Toph one night at dinner. "I guess some of the students don't know what you're doing or how. Even when you explain it to them, they must think there's some kind of trick to it."

"Why is there a problem?!" Toph pounded the table in frustration. "They can see me do it!"

"They also saw the Blind Bandit sweep the floor with six big strong Earthbenders," Sokka added. "But they knew about Earth Rumble already. If something is new and strange, it can be kinda scary."

"And you'd know about that, of course," Suki grinned.

"If you mean the Kyoshi Warriors, I got over that pretty quick."

"I hope that doesn't mean you got over me pretty quick."

"There's no way that's gonna happen." Sokka and Suki's hands slid toward each other.

Toph interrupted; "You know, my feet can still see you guys."

"Okay, Toph, out of respect for your feet we'll pick this up later."

"Not too much later, I hope," Suki grinned.

This was the one topic of conversation Toph wanted to avoid, but those two never seemed to get the message.

Katara, however, was sharper. She knew that Toph didn't like being around when the topic turned to romance or dating or the feminine side of life. One of the reasons she suggested a return to the Fancy Ladies Day Spa was to try to see if Toph had changed at all in that regard; so far, it looked as if she had not.

Still, she left it alone until late that night. To say that they were staying at an inn makes it sound simple and rustic; this "inn" was in the Upper Ring of Ba Sing Se, reserved for visitors to the palace of the King, and was far more palatial than anyplace else in the city. Sokka had his own room, since Aang was away on business; Suki meanwhile preferred to sleep with the rest of the Kyoshi Warriors in what had once been the barracks of the Dai Li agents of the King. This arrangement was as much the idea of the other Warriors as it was of Suki.

Katara waited until most of the palace lights were out (although it would have made no difference to Toph) before she said, "You still have a problem with the spa, don't you?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Well, I don't want to say the wrong thing, either. So maybe we should talk a bit about it now, and that way I don't have to keep asking you about it later."

"Leave it alone, Katara."

"I can't, as long as it makes a difference to you. And I can tell that it does."

"Can't you get it? I don't like girly stuff!"

"Why, because you're an Earthbender? Avatar Kyoshi was born an Earthbender. You can still be who you are."

"You don't know!"

"Know what?!"

"What I know!"

"Then tell me! I really can't drop it until you do. I mean, would you rather I spoke to your parents?"

"Don't bring them into this!"

"Why? What did they do?"

Toph stomped her foot on the floor, cracking it from one wall to the other. "Because they gave me the worst day of my life!"

"Oh no; what did they do to you?"

"They didn't do anything!" Toph stopped, fell silent. After a minute, she said, more quietly, "I don't want to talk about it."

"Would you rather talk about how you learned Earthbending? That was a good day, wasn't it?"

Now Toph's voice was almost too soft for Katara to hear: "Not really; they were part of that too."

"That's not what you told us at the Eastern Air Temple."

"That time we were talking about the sources of Bending. Like when you told us about the moon."

"Toph, you know I don't mean to be hurtful or bring up anything that makes you feel bad. But it sounds like you have something bothering you, and learning to be a Healer has taught me that sometimes you have to talk about things, even if you don't want to. Once you do, I promise you I won't ever have to ask about it."

"Ever again?"

"Ever again."

There was a long pause while Toph wrestled with her emotions; they seemed to be a far harder enemy to face than anyone at Earth Rumble Six. When she asked the question, her voice was soft, hesitant… nervous. Something very unusual for Toph Beifong:

"Katara, how old were you when… when you first found out about sex?"

This was probably the last question Katara expected to hear, and it caught her by surprise. She had to stop and think about it for a minute. "Honestly, I don't know. It's like I always knew, even when I was very little. But we were a small village on a small island in the Southern Tribe. Each family's home was basically one big room, so you got to see pretty much everything. I know I started helping Gran Gran deliver babies for the women in the village when I was five." Katara paused for a minute, letting herself get lost in her own memories.

Toph broke the silence. "Something happened to me when I was five, too. NOT what you're thinking! In a way… it was worse." Toph grew quiet again. Katara knew now that Toph was close, very close, to discussing some painful memory, and waited until the memory was ready to come.

"It sounds like your whole village could have fit onto our estate. When I was little, I couldn't get out, but the place was so big I didn't really want to. One time I started at the main gate and just walked, followed the wall and counted my steps, to see if I could get an idea how big the place was. Every time I tried that, I lost count." Katara thought she could hear a bit of a smile in Toph's voice.

"But mostly I was in the house or on the grounds. I never left, not even with guards or my parents. But they let me have the feeling that I had the run of the place, so I took advantage of that. I'd go anywhere, at any time, as long as it was on the grounds.

"By the time I was five, I kinda knew about sex, but not from my parents. You've met them; you know how proper they are. It would have killed them to talk to me directly about that. The year before we met, they hired a nurse to be my tutor, and she told me about getting older and bleeding and stuff. But it was… just another lesson. And I overheard the guards talking to each other, and stuff like that, so I eventually figured it out."

Toph paused again. She had laid out all the groundwork she could; there were no other chances to delay saying what she needed to say.

"I told you guys that I first met the badgermoles when I was about five, because I was running away from home. But I didn't tell you… why I was running away from home." Katara could hear the tears starting to come in Toph's voice. "It was one night. I had gotten up in the middle of the night. Maybe I wanted a drink of water or something; I don't remember what. But I went looking for my parents. There were no guards around, so it must have been late. So I just walked to their bedroom in my nightgown. And I could hear them talking.

"My father was saying 'Come on, Poppy, it's been such a long time.' And my mother said 'It's still not a safe time for me.' And my father said 'Some men have several wives, you know. I can certainly afford that, but I don't, out of respect for you. Why can't you cooperate with me?' And she said, 'Because I know how you feel about Toph. I feel the same way. I can't take the chance of giving birth to another mistake.'"

Katara, always the motherly type, wanted nothing at this point except to rush to Toph's bed and throw her arms around her. But the healer part of her knew this wasn't the end. She just said, "Oh no."

"Up until that moment I thought my parents did everything for me to protect me, because I was small and weak. I thought they… they loved me. But now I knew. They were ashamed of me." Now the tears flowed freely, maybe for the first time in years, certainly for the first time with someone else in the room. Katara didn't interrupt, didn't try to stop it. She knew Toph needed this.

After a while Toph spoke again. "I didn't know what to do. I couldn't talk to them, and the guards worked for them." It sounded as if Toph blew her nose, probably using her sleeve. "I wandered out onto the estate. I think I had the idea to find the wall farthest from the house, get over it somehow, and run away from home. I didn't know where or how. But that's when the best thing in the world happened to me."

"What was that?"

"I fell in a hole!"

Katara had heard it before: that nostalgic quality in Toph's voice. She'd heard it at the Eastern Air Temple. "The badgermoles?"

"They must have been under the estate for some time; there were a lot of tunnels. But this time they actually broke through the surface, and a stupid sad little kid fell in."

Katara knew it would be all right now; she left her bed and sat on Toph's, next to her. "And when she got out of the hole, she was a great and powerful Earthbender."

Toph unexpectedly threw her arms around Katara, hugging her. "Thanks for letting me talk about that," she said, not much louder than a whisper. Then, louder: "But don't you dare repeat what I just said to the others."

"I promise."

Then, because she liked Katara, Toph punched her in the upper arm. She nearly knocked Katara onto the floor. Nearly, but not quite.


End file.
